A new breed of advanced manufacturing companies is finding a home in Oxfordshire. Spanning a range of sectors, from future mobility to energy and healthcare to life sciences, they are using high-tech manufacturing techniques to create sophisticated products for our sustainable future.
The county is a perfect home for advanced manufacturers, who can find a skilled workforce and draw on a pool of talent in engineering, AI, robotics and many other disciplines. Towns such as Abingdon, Bicester and Witney are attracting investors who wish to set up state-of-the-art light manufacturing facilities in pleasant surroundings with good motorway connections.
Siemens Healthineers is investing £250 million in a new facility to manufacture MRI technology near Bicester. The company has been committed to the Oxfordshire region for several decades – its Eynsham factory to the west of Oxford employs 600 people. Its new carbon-neutral facility, due to open in 2030, will be the first major production site for its new, sustainable DryCool technology, which drastically reduces the amount of helium required in an MRI scanner.
Electric motor manufacturer YASA is relocating to Bicester, where it is investing £200 million in new headquarters at Bicester Motion. Its motors have applications in automotive, industrial, and marine and its subsidiary, Evolito, is developing electric motor technology and IP in aerospace. YASA, which has been based at Kidlington since it was spun out of Oxford University in 2009, was acquired by Mercedes-Benz in 2021.
‘After 5,000 years, metal remains the material of choice for the toughest jobs,’ says Michael Holmes, CEO of Alloyed. The company’s high performance metallic alloys are in demand as innovators seek ever stronger and lighter metals. Using industrial-scale 3D printing to combine many functions into one metal part, the Abingdon-based company makes metal components lighter, stronger, and more precise for a range of uses from aerospace to jewellery. Its customers include Boeing, Microsoft, Anglo American and BMW, and it also has manufacturing facilities in Seattle, USA. A spinout from Oxford University in 2017, Alloyed’s recent Series B round, led by Japanese investors SPARX and the Development Bank of Japan, was oversubscribed and truly international, raising £37million.
Other companies which have recently invested in high-tech production facilities in Oxfordshire include:
Owen Mumford, an Oxfordshire company which has pioneered medical devices such as the world’s first plastic auto-injector for over 70 years. In 2023, the company, which has sites in Europe, the USA and Asia, opened its third UK site in Witney. The facility is a centre of excellence and sets a benchmark for automation and assembly.
Moderna, the US biotech pioneer in messenger RNA (mRNA) therapeutics and vaccines, selected Harwell as the location for its Moderna Innovation and Technology Centre (MITC). The Centre has a research, development and manufacturing facility as well as a clinical biomarker laboratory.
Croatian company Rimac Technology chose Witney as a base for its rapidly-growing Rimac Energy division. It specialises in advanced Battery Energy Storage Systems (BESS) technology and delivering high-efficiency solutions.